Climate change impacts organizations around the world, and GSA is doing its part to make sure it can continue to serve the American people well into the future. Building upon GSA’s Climate Adaptation Action Plan, GSA’s Public Building Service and Federal Acquisition Service teamed with federal partners to conduct “threshing sessions” that build capacity, capability, and confidence within the federal government to address incremental climate risks.

GSA is doing its part to make sure it can continue to serve the American people well into the future.

GSA regional staff worked with customers to better understand climate risks to their assets. The Kansas City office identified its US Department of Agriculture customer, who is concerned about the future reliability of a mission critical data center and its information technology support given extreme heat and persistent drought conditions that are projected for the region through the end of the century. GSA’s National Capital Region staff wanted to leverage lessons learned from a major flooding event in 2006 at Internal Revenue Service headquarters to assess how projected extreme heat and rising sea levels will impact the facility and the telecommunications services that support it. The NCR threshing session was selected as a White House Council on Environmental Quality GreenGov Spotlight Community.

GSA’s Climate Adaptation team includes representatives from the Public Buildings Service, the Federal Acquisition Service and the Office of Governmentwide Policy. The GSA team received the award during a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, and the work continues. GSA is supporting an upcoming Washington, D.C., Climate Risks workshop with NASA, the National Capital Planning Commission, and Smithsonian by sharing its techniques for translating climate science into an engaging storyline. GSA also continues to communicate lessons learned from the threshing sessions with the Federal Adaptation Community of Practice.